Back in the 1990s, when I was going through intensive
psychotherapy, I had an experience that was both humorous and highly
instructive. My therapist remarked to me, towards the end of a particularly
difficult session, that he had the impression that I was not taking good care
of my inner child—that part of me that remained a scared, angry little boy even
though I was a man in his fifties. He suggested that I purchase a doll that
would symbolize that sensitive part of me that was still in turmoil, and tend
to its needs and try to make it feel better. So I took his advice and stopped
off at a Toys R Us and spent the better part of an hour searching the shelves
for just the right Stevie doll. After much deliberation I settled on a little
fellow who I thought might do the trick. I made my purchase and headed out to
the parking lot. As I write this little tale I can still feel the biting wind
that chilled me as I threw the shopping bag in the trunk of the car and hopped
into the driver’s seat to warm up on that fateful winter day.
Several weeks later my therapist inquired about the progress
I was making in the caretaking of my doll. In that instant I had one of those
moments of awareness that propels a quantum leap in our personal development. I
realized that the bag with the doll was still in the trunk of my car. The
immensity of my ineptitude stunned me as I visualized little Stevie frozen to
death from my parental neglect. As a caretaker I had failed miserably. Even to
one as dense as I, this situation was a perfect representation of how I had
neglected, over many decades, to be attentive to my own emotional needs as I
expended great amounts of energy taking care of others.
I am happy to report that I immediately retrieved Little
Stevie and spent the next month making sure that he was warm, well fed, and
much loved. I even went back to the store and bought him some companions so he
would not feel as friendless as I felt throughout much of my early years. He
and his three companions now reside in the night stand next to my bed and we
all sleep together secure in the knowledge that I had learned my lesson and was
applying it to my own daily maintenance. Because I came to realize how scared
that little boy really was until I learned to take care of him, I bought the
three scariest looking dolls in the store. They are now his best friends and I
no longer live with the mortal fear that plagued me for more than half a
century. It comforts me to know that I can do a reasonably good job of
protecting myself from the slings and arrows that are occasionally hurled in my
direction. My inner child no longer worries that he might be, on too many
occasions, a fatherless child.
Bloodlust
For my eighteenth birthday my Uncle Cecil, whose glory days
were lived in the armed forces during World War II, bought me a rifle as a
right of passage into manhood. I still remember how impressed I was by this
Savage .223 sniper weapon with a four-power scope. I can still smell the gun
oil and feel the smoothness of the barrel and the textured wooden butt. I kept
the rifle in my apartment on West End Avenue and, fortunately, never used it in
anger or self-defense.
About ten years later, in one of the darkest periods of my
life, when I was struggling with a challenging marriage, two jobs and an
unfinished dissertation, I took the rifle out to Pennsylvania where my parents
ran a summer camp. On numerous occasions I loaded the extra long shells into
the rifle and went out hunting. I shot at everything that moved—chipmunks, squirrels,
rabbits, and woodchucks were all fair game. I can tell you that it was a scary
activity because, when I sighted my prey, I trembled with fear and excitement
before pulling the trigger. The report of the rifle was very loud and it bucked
in my hands. Even scarier was walking over to see what had happened to my
target. Usually what I saw was a lot of blood and ripped flesh. The worst
feelings came when I discovered that I had only wounded my victim and I had to
shoot it a second time. It was, indeed, an exercise in blood lust.
As I looked back years later during my psychotherapeutic
process I realized that I had engaged in that gruesome activity because, for
brief periods of time, it made me feel alive and powerful. For someone who was
struggling with a life-long bout of depression and feelings of worthlessness,
those hunts provided me with the same kind of jolt one gets from putting a
cattle prod on a dead carcass. There was no lasting joy, only a feeling that I
had engaged in something primal and dirty. I had not killed those animals so I
could eat. I only killed them for sport, if you can call it that.
I share this with you because I know that many of my friends
and acquaintances have never fired a rifle and torn the flesh from a living creature.
You are not missing a thing. It didn’t make me more of a man. It didn’t make me
a better person. It just put me in the same club as those who do not respect
the sanctity of life and the right of every living thing to spend its days
without having to worry about some angry son-of-a-bitch blowing your head
off. Whenever I hear of politicians
proudly toting their guns for all to see I know exactly where they are coming
from and feel very sorry that they need to do that. I also worry about their
ability to be keepers of the public trust. There are better ways to enhance one’s
life. I know how much emotional trouble they are in and must remind myself that
I am not qualified to throw stones.
Happy Family
I grew up on
the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the middle of the 20th century.
At that time it was a place shared by a large number of well educated, reformed
Jews who were enjoying their second-generation status as well as a sizable
population of first-generation Puerto Rican families striving to find a place
for themselves in a less-than-tropical urban environment. Every Sunday my
family went out for dinner. Our search for food took us out of our stately
apartment building on West End Avenue and 90th Street and up to
Broadway where one could find a Chinese restaurant on every other block in either
direction. As we approached the corner we needed to make a communal decision to
go south to Cantonese or Shanghai cuisine or north to Mandarin and Szechuan. Occasionally
we went to Isaac Gellis or Starks’s, but mostly it was Chinese. One of my
favorite destinations was Lingnan Restaurant on the east side of 93rd
Street because they had a giant mural by Dong Kingman in their lobby. His
painting of a large junk sailing under the Brooklyn Bridge was a most
attractive visual prelude to the exoticism of the forbidden cuisine we were
about to explore.
One of the
most intriguing items on the top of Column A, on the left-facing page of the
copious menu, was a dish called Happy Family. It consisted of beef, chicken,
and shrimp and all kinds of Asian vegetables we could not imagine eating at
home. Its title and description promised to fulfill whatever culinary desire
one could have. Imagine, if you will, a panoply of delectable ingredients immersed
in a deliciously warm white sauce. My eye always paused at that place as I
perused the left side of the menu (Column B on the right contained dishes of a
lesser degree that no self-respecting Jewish Prince would even consider
ordering). So many years later I am amused to revisit that scene because, on
that one line, Lingnan’s menu promised me what I secretly wished for my family —
happiness, contentment, and satiation. Fifty years later, without bitterness or
resentment, I can finally relish the relationship between Happy Family, the culinary
potpourri, and Happy Family, the oxymoron. My parents tried very hard to make a
happy home in which to raise two precocious boys, but were plagued by an
emotional stain that had been passed down to them from too many generations of
unhappy people.
Lingnan
Restaurant is now long gone and so is my need for the protection of loving
parents; thankfully, late in life, I finally learned to do a good job of
parenting myself.
The mural “East Meets West” that Kingman painted for the Lingnan
Restaurant was rescued, restored and subsequently donated to the Brooklyn
Public Library by Roslyn and Eugene Gamiel in 1997. The mural is now installed
in the Library’s Multilingual Center. One of these days I will haul myself out
to Brooklyn and reacquaint myself with Dong’s homage to New York prepared for
the flood of childhood memories that are certain to surface. Without doubt, I
will stop off at a Chinese restaurant on the way back, but, no matter how good
the cuisine, it will not compare with that legendary dish that beckons me even now.
If I have piqued your interest, you can see the forty year-old Kingman
and his wife eating at a table in front of the mural in the May 14, 1951 issue
of Life magazine, page 100.
No Degrees of Separation
Life is, most certainly,
a fascinating adventure. I enjoy getting up each morning wondering what will
happen today. Who will I meet? What will I learn? What challenges will test my
abilities? I eagerly anticipate the myriad connections and intersections that will
be revealed to me as the day progresses.
Case in point:
Several years ago I was
asked to serve on the search committee for the Dean of Humanities and the Arts.
Of the several candidates we invited to be interviewed on campus there was a
rather brilliant and compassionate linguist from the University of New Haven
who also happened to be blind. He gave a wonderful interview and afterwards I
was his host on a tour of the campus. His name was Robert Greenberg and it was
my pleasure to chat with him as I escorted him around. We talked a great deal about
academic issues facing the college but we never got around to talking about our
families.
As part of some larger
plan, that issue was revealed to me some time later as I happened to be
channel-surfing and came to 60 Minutes on CBS. I tuned in just in time to watch
a segment on a young lad named Jay Greenberg who may well turn out to be one of
the great musical geniuses of the 21st Century. This young fellow, then 14, had
already written a host of serious music and was an advanced student at
Juilliard where he was being shepherded to an amazing career. The London
Philharmonic had already recorded his fifth symphony and it appears that his
creative process is exactly what Mozart enjoyed (or suffered with)--the music
just flows full blown from his internal musical fountain.
As I go through my day
there is always an underlying question relative to the people whose orbits
cross mine--What is the degree of separation between us? This relationship
remains a mystery relative to the people who just pass me by, often like images
on a dancing TV screen. But, every once and a while I interact with someone and
discover that we are, in fact, related by a certain number of degrees. Well, that
night the Six Degrees of Separation meter went to ONE when the 60 Minutes interviewer
went to young Jay's home. The audience was introduced to his Israeli-born
mother and his blind....wait a minute...."I know this guy! That's Bob
Greenberg, the fellow I escorted around the North Campus." Suddenly, the
story went from being about THEM to being about US. The story is always about
us, we just may not know it at the time.
If people everywhere
started thinking about the relatedness of all the planet’s inhabitants we might
live in a better world. Thanks to John Donne, every time I hear the bell toll I
know it tolls for me.
2008 Post-log: Robert
Greenberg did not get the deanship and moved on with his life. Currently, here at CCNY, we enjoy the
stewardship of Dean Fred Reynolds who does a wonderful job of facilitating our
educational process. He also plays the piano, but, believe me, he ain't no
Mozart…or Greenberg.
2010 Post-log: Robert
Greenberg is now the acting Dean of Arts & Sciences at Hunter College and
Fred Reynolds was invited to be executive vice president of the University of
Cincinnati, a school more than twice the size of CCNY and willing to pay
handsomely for his expertise. Jay Greenberg is reading music at Peterhouse,
Cambridge and I am still at CCNY waiting for a new search committee to pick our
next dean.
Battered Citizen
I was standing in my office the other day when one of my
colleagues asked me how I was feeling. I paused for a moment and realized that
I was not all right, that there was, indeed, something quite wrong with me—I
was way too stressed. When I thought about what was bothering me I realized
that it was not just one event that was causing my distress, it was eight years
of aggravation and abuse. One would expect that a Liberal like me would be
joyous at the prospect of an Obama presidency, but, instead, I am depressed and
exhausted. There is, apparently, a limit to the number of times one can be lied
to, insulted, and violated before it takes its toll on you. I have been holding
my breath until I was blue in the face; my soul bordered on hopelessness
waiting to be rescued from the hands of the inept and the immoral. I thought
about it for the rest of the day until I realized that I was suffering from
BCS—Battered Citizen Syndrome.
Since the day Justice O’Connor decided to make a wise cracking,
foul-mouthed frat boy the leader of the free world my ability to cope with
deceit and cruelty has been tested mightily. While watching the 2001
inauguration I realized that we as a nation were in trouble when two different
benedictions invoked the blessing of “Our Lord, Jesus Christ.” There was
something decidedly un-American about that day and the anti-American spirit has
continued unrelentingly. I am firmly convinced that when W swore to uphold and
defend the Constitution that bright and sunny day he had no idea what he was
promising. I am certain he never read the document nor understood what it
represented and demanded of him. We have all come to fully appreciate what
stupidity and ignorance can do when placed together in high office.
Like an abused spouse I, and all sentient citizens of this
great land, have been exposed to an endless assault on our sensibilities. The
list of insults is long indeed, beginning with Bush v. Gore. We love our
country, but have watched as it has been turned into a fascist state that
little resembles the ideal the founders envisioned. My head reels with the
memory of people and events that have helped to pummel me into a state of
numbness. Here are just a few of my personal favorites that will live in
infamy: Kathryn Harris, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, 9/11, the Downing Street
Memo, Shock and Awe, the Bush Doctrine, Mission Accomplished, IEDs, Tony Blair,
Karl Rove, Hurricane Katrina, Brownie, No Child Left Behind, NSA wiretapping,
Tora Bora, Wanted Dead or Alive, Alberto Gonzales, Harriet Meiers, Samuel
Alito, Diebold, WMD, Candoleeza Rice, Privatizing Social Security, the Wall
Street Bailout, The Surge is Working, The Coalition of the Willing, Faith-based
Initiatives, Guantanamo, Water Boarding, and Torture, yes, Torture—that is what
we have been subjected to here on Broadway and out there in the heartland.
Maddeningly, one drop at a time, each of us has had to endure daily assaults on
our hearts and minds.
No one need remind me that much blame lies on both sides of
the Congressional aisle, but I will not feel safe and secure until the Bush
Crime Family has left the seat of power and a well-educated, well-spoken young
African-American has been given a chance to see if there is some way to help us
dig our way out of the hole into which we have all fallen. There are still 64
days left to this nightmare and I still cringe whenever I turn on the news
expecting to be battered just one more time. The lunatics have been running the
asylum for what seems like a very long time and the time to set us free is long
past due.
Sendai
How many times in my
life have I seen some terrible event unfold somewhere else in the world and
think it has nothing to do with me? John Donne would be so disappointed that I
never truly took his Meditation Number17, written so very long ago, to heart. Compounding
the situation is my awareness of degrees of separation, but I often do not seek
enough data to make a proper calculation of the distance. You would think by
now my first reaction would be “Why does the bell toll for me?” I am
embarrassed to admit that I am not there yet. I still need more spiritual
growth to bring me to that place where I can feel that all men are my brothers.
I can only hope that some day I will come to fully realize that there is no
They, only Us.
Well, today I got some
data that brings this week’s catastrophe right to my doorstep. About a year ago
I became acquainted with a lovely young musician from Japan by the name of Aya
Nishina. This talented lady, so gentle and kind, is beautiful inside and out,
and so very bright and talented besides. She is a treasured addition to my
coterie of acquaintances!
Today I discovered
that Aya comes from Sendai, the city that was flooded by the great tsunami. She
is spending her waking hours finding out if her friends and family are all
right. Suddenly, her distress has become mine, and I can only imagine by half
what she must be feeling today. I pray that she will not receive news of
personal loss or suffering. While waiting for her next email I have been
researching her native city and have discovered that the famous song by Rentaro
Taki, Kojo NoTsuki, describes an
ancient castle whose ruins stood in Sendai. To honor all the wonderful students
I have had from Japan I put that tune in my piano instruction book a few years
back. More recently I made an arrangement of that song in an attempt to show my
students how highly chromatic harmonies could accompany that simple, plaintive
tune. The poignant sadness inherent in that song seems more appropriate this
week than ever before.
If my arrangement is no
cool enough for you, check out “Japanese Folk Song” from the 1967 album Straight, No Chaser of Thelonius Monk.
Taking Care of My Inner Child
No Degrees of Separation
Sendai
